Page:ONCE A WEEK JUL TO DEC 1860.pdf/168

160 who encouraged Xavier to undertake the task, assuring them of unbounded success.

Xavier started in 1549, only five years after the adventurous Pinto had first re-discovered that empire—“where gold was as dross, and the people of gentle manners, though brave:” yet Xavier was not in time to claim the honour of having been the first to introduce his creed amongst the Japanese; for on his arrival at Macao, he learnt that at any rate a faith in the cross, as the real panacea for all mundane evils, was already making rapid progress amongst the people of Bongo. It appears that some priests of the Roman faith, whether Spanish or Portuguese our worthy chronicler does not say, succeeded, before Xavier’s arrival, in reaching the shores of Japan. They had been kindly received; but as the Bonzes of the Budhist faith were common throughout the country, the arrival of strangers strongly resembling them in appearance and professions did not at first excite astonishment, or impress the natives with any great respect for the sanctity of their mission. The profanity of a Japanese prince, however, soon gave the servants of Rome an opportunity of striking awe into the minds of their future converts. This prince, in waggish mood, put up his reverend visitors in a mansion sadly haunted by evil spirits, without telling them of the trick he desired to play them. When night came, and they sought repose, they were disturbed by dreadful apparitions and prodigious spectres, horrid noises, and rattling of chains. The stools and cushions flew about the apartments, and their reverences’ garments were torn off their backs: expecting every minute to be destroyed by these Japanese demons, they prayed, and used all known exorcisms; at last they signed themselves with the sign of the cross, and scored it on the walls and door-posts. The demons of Japan could not withstand this. They fled, and the good fathers slept in peace. Next day, the wicked prince and the people heard with astonishment of this cure for haunted houses; they were almost persuaded to Christianity, and “in token of it,” naïvely says the ancient writer, “and to keep away evil spirits from their abodes, crosses were marked upon all their walls and door-posts throughout that city.” The poor Japanese prince had been caught in his own trap, much in the same way that we find the old adage illustrated by a native artist of Yedo, and the prince could hardly have given the clever priests a better opportunity of proving that they were still more astute necromancers than any his state could boast of.

Encouraged by this promising intelligence, Xavier pushed on, and after dire adventures, he reached Japan, to find princes and people ready to receive his earnest and zealous preaching. The three great and almost independent rulers of the island of Kiu-siu were publicly received into the Church of Rome, and for about fifteen years, that is from 1560 to 1575, the progress of Christianity was most rapid. Xavier however only stayed long enough to see the cross flash through the island of Kiu-siu or Bongo. Elated at his success, satisfied with the idea that all Japan would follow the example of the thousands upon whom he had laid hands, pleased with the tractable gentle nature of the Japanese as they came under his own observation, ignoring the sullen bearing of the large priesthood of the Budhist and Sin-too faiths, whose temples he and his followers had overthrown, the great apostle turned his eyes to the yet unopened land of China; and leaving his blessing with the people, who he tell us “were truly the delight of his heart,” he went forth to lay down his life as the first of that truly noble army of martyrs who have fallen in striving to sow the seeds of faith in that religionless land of Cathay. During fifteen years the thirty thousand converts of Xavier swelled into more than a million in number. We find by the letters of the Jesuit fathers to their superiors, that by 1577 they had progressed as far as Miaco in Nipon, the great spiritual capital itself. There, in the stronghold of the ancient faith of Japan, on one occasion no less than 7000 persons had been converted, and a church had been so skilfully erected, so richly ornamented, that it had conduced much to raise Christianity in Japanese estimation, and enabled the fathers to preach the faith openly and safely in the most remote portions of the empire. But it was in Kiu-siu that the success of Christianity was most marked. There were three churches and a college established in Fizen alone, of which Nangasaki was the principal; and, indeed, it appears from the testimony of all writers of that day, that the only check in